I'm a senior editor and the Shanghai bureau chief of Forbes magazine. Now in my 14th year at Forbes, I compile the Forbes China Rich List, Hong Kong Rich List and Taiwan Rich List. I was previously a correspondent for Bloomberg News in Taipei and Shanghai and for the Asian Wall Street Journal in Taipei. I'm a Massachusetts native, fluent Mandarin speaker, and hold degrees from the University of Vermont and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Clara Kuo knew what she wanted to do in life after attending her first art auction at age 19. “I was awestruck at how much knowledge auctioneers had of the works on sale, artists and whole art periods, “ Kuo recently recalled. “I immediately fell in love with the profession and decided that this is what I wanted to do in my life.”Her goal to have her own business came true in 1999 when she co-founded Ravenel International Art Group in Taipei with friends.

When Ravenel’s first big moment in the auction business arrived that year, however, it was “a disaster,” she said. The sale was held just 10 days after a powerful earthquake killed more than 3,000 people in Taiwan. “No one felt like spending a lot of money or buying art,” Kuo said. Less than 30% of the items on auction ended up being sold.

Kuo’s passion wasn’t easily diminished, and Ravenel is today Taiwan’s largest locally owned auction house. It has a way to go before it becomes a global giant: Auction sales last year totaled $67 million, less than half of the net profit at Sotheby’s. Yet helped by a big increase in Taiwan’s fortunes over the years and a tide of interest in art investment globally, Ravenel has developed a competitive strength that Kuo says has enabled it to grow despite tough competition from vastly bigger global rivals: Local knowledge of buyers that help it source items that will sell well.Wealthy Taiwan collectors that have done business with Ravenel include Aurora Group’s billionaire chairman Chen Yung-tai, and electronics maker Yageo’s chairman Pierre Chen.

The future is still promising, too, said Kuo, Ravenel’s 44-year-old vice chairman. Growing wealth and widening tastes especially among younger buyers make for interest in new items, she said. Even though Taiwan’s political relationship with China are fraught with conflict, there’s plenty of interest in China’s fast-changing and complex art scene, too.

Ravenel – named after an architect from the era of Louis XIV with a large collection and good eye for art – was spawned in part from Kuo’s youthful romance with the city of Paris.“I felt that if I studied art there, I would not only have a chance to earn qualifications, but I could immerse myself in the beauty of art which is omnipresent” in a city that boasts the Louvre, the Musee D’Orsay, the Pompidu Centre or hundreds of other museums and exhibitions, Kuo said. She grew up with parents who manufacturers of furniture and toys – including Rubik’s cube for Mattel — but enjoyed art and encouraged their children to, too.

Once Kuo had graduated from the Ecole Superieur Internationale D’Art et de Gestion, and the Ecole du Louvre, she became the first Taiwanese to work for the world famous Drouot auction house, Commissaires Priseurs de Paris, where she obtained the official French qualification to be an auctioneer.

Clara Kuo

“I became enraptured with the French salon cultural spirit, in which one’s life is enhanced through beauty, conversation, and music. I knew that I wanted to bring these qualities back to Taiwan, and introduce this way of life.”Kuo returned home to carry out that mission in 1997, a year when Taiwan was at “a low point in the auction business.” Christie’s and Sotheby’s had pulled out of Taipei. Kuo, however, saw promise where those foreign giants didn’t. The first generation of entrepreneurs that grew rich from Taiwan’s post-World War II economic boom had developed a very healthy interest in collecting traditional Chinese art and antiques, she noticed.

And that, she believed, was part of a larger pattern that she had discerned in the art business worldwide. “As economies develop and wealth is accumulated, people become financially secure (and) want to enhance their lifestyles and living environments,” she said. “One of the things they do is start collecting art. As they are most familiar with the traditional art of their culture, this is usually what they begin to collect. Later as their experience broadens and their tastes develop they will begin to collect modern and contemporary art from their own culture, and finally as the baton is passed to future generations who are young and open minded they will collect avant-garde and more esoteric art.”

By the end of the 1990s, Taiwan’s early collectors had already built up great collections of Chinese classical paintings, calligraphy, porcelain, bronze and antiquities. Their appetite had been whetted in part by the presence in Taipei of the National Palace Museum, which houses much of the Qing dynasty’s imperial collection brought to Taiwan from the mainland when the Kuomintang government moved its headquarters there during the civil war in the 1940s.Kuo felt the time was right to start an auction business that would introduce Taiwan collectors to a broader range of art, including Western artistic styles, and the enhancement of life.

To get Ravenel off the ground, she turned to “a small group of like-minded friends who were businesspeople, around the same age, and budding art collectors” for funds. One, Arthur Wang, an interior designer, had always wanted to be an artist himself, but “in true filial fashion” had followed his family’s wishes and become a businessman, Kuo said.Another in the same mold was Charles Chen. “To be frank, at that beginning I didn’t know how good it would be,” he said of Kuo’s business plan. However, he felt that Kuo was “clever” and “strong willed,” and backed the company as a friend. The initial capitalization of the company was US$2 million.

Once the founders decided to start a business, they had staff it in a market that was also just getting off the ground. “Back in 1999, the art market in Taiwan was small and very narrow, so there was not a huge pool of talent,”Kuo said. “Everyone we hired either had a background in art history, or had experience working in galleries. I designed and created many new courses which everyone had to take two or three times a week. I also hired two people whose job was to research and study the art market worldwide on a weekly basis, and they had to report to everyone in the company what was happening.”

Ravenel survived its rocky start in 1999. In 2001, Kuo started to promote Chinese artists to the Taiwan market. “It’s hard to imagine that just 13 years ago, almost no one had any knowledge of contemporary Chinese art,” she said.From two trips she had made to Beijing, she selected works by Zhang Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi, Fang Lijun, Wang Guangyi, Cai Guoqiang, Yue Minjun and Zhou Chunya to show in Taipei. To keep on top of the market, Ravenel opened offices in Singapore in 2001, and in Beijing in 2003. In the same year, the company held its first auction in Hong Kong. That arrival of a “golden time in the Asian art world” in the ensuing decade led Ravenel to start to introduce a new generation of Korean, Japanese and Southeast Asian artists to its Taiwan clients. Ravenel’s most recent auction, held in Taipei and Hong Kong in June, generated $24 million of sales.

Asked how Taiwan, mainland and Hong Kong buyers differ, Kuo said, “Enormously,” Kuo said. “Taiwanese are passionate about their collecting. They love their art, are very knowledgeable about it, and study it hard. They like to build collections. For example if a person collects works by Zhang Daqian, then they will build up a collection over many years covering his entire oeuvre, with works from every period of the artist’s life, and representative works of all his styles and methods. During the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945, the Japanese introduced the concept of collecting art to Taiwan, and more importantly the concept of private collections. So Taiwan has a relatively long history compared to say Hong Kong and modern China of collecting and building collections. So a broad range of collectibles will be found in Taiwan.”

By contrast, Hong Kong collectors are generally from the financial industry and view art an investment that will increase in value. “So collectibles in Hong Kong tend to be very mainstream with few minor works or groundbreaking works on offer. Collectors have little true knowledge or understanding of the art world,” Kuo said.

And the mainland differs, too. “Chinese collectors tend to be interested in trophy works. The higher the price and the more glamorous the work is, the more interest Chinese buyers will show. It’s as if they want instant gratification, something to show off to their friends. They also view art as an investment, and because of this, there are many worrying trends in the Chinese art market, such as collusion (among) artists, collectors, galleries and auction houses in artificially inflating prices, as art is treated as a commodity.”

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